When you're part of an industry, it's sometimes easy to forget that the majority of the population doesn't always have the same "common sense" as you think they should.  What's common sense to an internet marketer might not be common sense to a farmer.  And what's common sense to a brick and mortar store owner might not be common sense to someone in ecommerce.  So what happens when store owners start making the move to ecommerce without doing the proper research first?

They change website URLs without updating their online ads to point to the new addresses… and blow $4,000 in the process.

Or at least, that's what this jewelry store owner did when he decided to add an online component to his existing business.  As his staff added, changed, and deleted pages from the the new website, they failed to realize that the changes would require updates to existing ads.  In turn, $4,000 worth of clickthrough was generated before the error was discovered.  That $4,000 might be chump change compared to the sales the company might have earned had those visitors landed where they were supposed to.

The story isn't unique or new.  Every company out there has made marketing mistakes, especially when they were just starting out.  Some well established companies continue to make marketing mistakes.  The moral of this story applies to everyone:  make sure you've done your homework before starting any new endeavor.  The time invested in carefully planning, research, and attention to detail is usually worth the headache savings later on.